Whether Uncle Sam Had the Right to Poison Drinkers
Christmas Eve, 1926, was hectic in New York City’s hospitals. Just one of them, Bellevue, was inundated with dozens of people who fell seriously ill after they drank contaminated alcohol. By New Year’s Eve, 1,200 people in the Big Apple had been sickened by poisonous alcohol, and at least 400 had died. The city’s medical examiner assigned a toxicologist to examine confiscated whiskey, and based on the findings, issued an alert to warn the citizens that: “practically all the liquor that is sold in New York today is toxic“.
The impact fell heaviest on the poor: the rich and well-heeled could afford to consume the best liquor available, such as real whiskey smuggled in from abroad. As the medical examiner noted, most of those harmed by the repurposed industrial alcohol were those: “who cannot afford expensive protection and deal in low grade stuff“. When the public learned that the federal government had deliberately poisoned industrial alcohol stocks, an argument raged about whether it had the right to do so.